Domaine Nicolas Faure Aloxe-Corton 2017 750ml

At La Cabotte in November 2018, Thibault Liger-Belair and the Mugneret-Gibourg sisters were handed an Aloxe-Corton from a grower none of them had heard of, and approved.

The parcel is small even by this domaine's standards: 0.12 hectares leased under fermage, split between two lieux-dits, Les Valozières and Les Caillettes, with vines of roughly sixty years, according to Nouvelles Sélections, the importer in Japan. When Julia Harding MW tasted the following vintage from tank, Faure described Valozières as clay-limestone and Caillettes as finer, sandy ground, and confirmed that every red here is fermented with whole bunches. The importers differ on barrel time: Nouvelles Sélections gives twelve months in used casks from Denis Berthaut, Veritas Wines sixteen months in five-year-old barrels. Both say the wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered.

Nicolas Faure had no vines to inherit. After a year each with Agnès Paquet and Jean-Louis Chave he joined the vineyard team at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in May 2010, leased his first plot, Les Herbues in Nuits-Saint-Georges, in March 2011, and stayed at DRC until Henri-Frédéric Roch took him to Prieuré Roch in 2015. In July 2017 he left to run the vineyards of Berthaut-Gerbet, his partner Amélie Berthaut's estate. His own domaine at Meuilley totals 1.12 hectares, ploughed by horse, farmed without chemical fertiliser, herbicide or insecticide, and fermented on native yeasts. His stated aim: aroma, complexity and a long finish.

2015 was the first vintage of this cuvée, and Wine Uki, the Japanese retailer that handled the 2017 allocation, puts the year's production at 866 bottles. Joshua Cohen of Flatiron Wines, in Burgundy for the Hospices de Beaune sale that November, called 2017 a lovely and transparent vintage and finally a plentiful one. At dinner that week, at La Cabotte, Faure's Aloxe-Corton went round a table of growers who knew nothing of his one-hectare domaine.

In the glass

JancisRobinson.com reviewed the 2017 on 25 November 2019, but the note sits behind its paywall and we have not read it. Julia Harding MW's note on the 2018, tasted from tank for the same site (as quoted by K&L Wine Merchants), describes a darker, less open wine than Les Herbues: lightly peppery, a hint of lavender she links to the stems, a chalkier, firmer finish, 16.5/20. Winehog, tasting the 2015 in 2016, found the Aloxe-Corton the bigger wine of the pair, larger in frame and darker. Expect that family resemblance.

When to open

iDealwine lists the 2017 at 13% and suggests serving it at 16°C. Our suggestion, not the domaine's: an hour in a decanter; nine years from harvest, it should hold for another decade.

At the table

Our suggestion: roast guinea fowl, or œufs en meurette made with a splash of the same wine.

Quick facts

Provenance

Sourced from the Japanese importer.

Sources: Nouvelles Sélections (Japanese importer); Veritas Wines; Flatiron Wines (J. Cohen, 2018); Wine Uki; iDealwine; JancisRobinson.com (J. Harding MW, via K&L Wine Merchants); Winehog